CHAPTER ONESALT WATER MONEYCaptain KiddISometime in the autumn of the year 1695, Captain William Kidd, of New York, arrived in the city of London. He came as master of a trading sloop; he left in the following spring a commissioned officer of his most gracious Majesty, King William III, on the quarter-deck of what was really a man-of-war.This was not the first time, however, that Captain Kidd had been in the public service. Said to be the son of a Scottish minister, he became first definitely noticeable in the province of New York, where, sometime before 1695, the grateful council of New York had voted him a gratuity of one hundred and fifty pounds for valuable efforts in suppressing local disturbances, ensuing the revolution of 1688. Not only that, but duringEngland’s interminable argument with France, he had locked shrouds with the Frenchmen off the West Indies, thus acquiring the repute of a “mighty man” against them.In fact, Captain Kidd when he thus stepped on to the docks of old London was a substantial colonial, a householder and taxpayer of the town of New York, where, we must suppose, his wife and daughter moved in those delectable geometrical figures, the best circles.The royal commission of 1696, though, was a novel one in the captain’s experience.It is important to notice the exact wording of this commission:“William III. By the grace of God, king of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, defender of the faith, etc. To our trusty and well-beloved captain William Kidd, commander of the ship Adventure-galley, or to any other the commander for the time being. Whereas we are informed That captain Thomas Too, John Ireland, captain Thomas Wake, and Captain William Maze, or Mace, and other our subjects, natives or inhabitants of New England, New York and elsewhere in our plantations in America, have associated themselves with divers other wicked and ill-disposed persons, and do, against the law of nations, daily commit many and great piracies, robberies, and depredations in the parts of America, and in other parts, to the grave hindrance and discouragement of trade andnavigation, and to the danger and hurt of our loving subjects, our allies, and all others navigating the seas upon their lawful occasions; Now know ye, That we being desirous to prevent the aforesaid mischiefs, and, as far as in us lies, to bring the said pirates, free-booters and sea-rovers to justice, have thought fit, and do hereby give and grant unto you the said William Kidd (to whom our commissioners for exercising the office of our Lord High Admiral of England, have granted a commission as a private man of war, bearing date the 11th day of December, 1695,) and unto the commander of the said ship for the time being, and unto the officers mariners and others, who shall be under your command, full power and authority to apprehend, seize, and take into your custody, as well the said Thomas Too, John Ireland, captain Thomas Wake, and Captain William Maze or Mace, as all such pirates, free-booters and sea-rovers, being our own subjects, or of any other nation associated with them, which you shall meet upon the coast or seas of America, or in any other seas or ports, with their ships and vessels, and also such merchandizes, money, goods and wares, as shall be found on board, or with them, in case they shall willingly yield themselves; but if they will not submit without fighting, then you are by force to compel them to yield. And we do also require you to bring, or cause to be brought, such pirates, free-booters and sea-rovers as you shall seize, to a legal trial; to the end that they may be proceeded against according to law in such cases.And we do hereby charge and command all our officers, ministers, and other our loving subjects whatsoever, to be aiding and assisting you in the premises. And we do hereby enjoin you to keep an exact journal of your proceeding in the execution of the premises, and therein to set down the names of such pirates and their officers and company, and the names of such ships and vessels as you shall by virtue of these presents seize and take, and the quantities of arms, ammunition, provision and loading of such ships, and the true value of the same, as near as you can judge.... In witness whereof we have caused the great seal of England to be affixed to these presents. Given at our court at Kensington, the 26th. day of January, 1695, and in the 7th. year of our reign.”Of all of which the sum is that Commander Kidd, in his private man-of-war, is to catch Tom Too and the rest of them wherever he could find them, bring them to justice and render a careful account of their ships and cargoes. The ostensible aim is to protect the American colonies; actually it is to exterminate piracy wherever discovered.English-speaking folk have been as much a part of the sea as the white spume of the waves. Like their element, too, they have made for good and ill. The by-product of England’s maritime effort was the sea-rover, a creature often as skilled, unfearing and enterprising as his brotherwho went up and down the highways of the ocean on more lawful occasions.Seventeenth-and eighteenth-century piracy gave to the world that villainous, but picturesque, aggregation of maritime felons which has so much fascination for people who never grow too old to enjoy vicarious adventure: Too, Ireland, Wake, Low, Davis, Lewis, England, Blackbeard, Avery, Gow, Quelch and other bold quarter-deck—usually the other fellow’s quarter-deck—strutters, including, notably, the subject of our present observations.These ungentlemen gleaned in three principal regions: Africa, the East and West Indies, with an occasional flyer down Brazil way. Under the black flag, we shall presently see something of all these places; just now we are engaged with the East Indies. Coming and going, and sometimes lingering, they bothered the “plantations” all the way from Charleston to Boston, so that the total scope of piracy was sweeping and widely embracing.India was pouring out richly its products of field and loom, plantation and cottage, and was drawing hungrily in from Arabia, Europe, Africa, everywhere, the things nature or economic circumstance denied her. The carriers of this mighty movement of materials were usually rather insignificant craft called grabs, pinks, galiots, sloops and what-not; affairs of one mast, acouple of men, a boy and about sixteen ounces of cargo. These were coasters; a larger vessel plied to the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea under charter of Moors, Armenians and other swart merchants.Bumping these lesser fry out of the way, however, were the comparatively impressive ships of the expanding European trading companies—Dutch, Swedish, Austrian and so on—and preeminently the English East India Company, destined to grow great enough eventually to swallow India herself,—old John Company.The English company—taking it as illustrative—lined the Indian coast with its forts or factories, and built its own vessels, the noted “Indiamen”, at its home docks at Deptford; fought its rivals, fought the natives, carried on perpetual war under the banner of trade. Protected to the point of complete monopoly by royal and parliamentary charters, it became practically a State itself, with the power of minting money, maintaining forts and armies, negotiating treaties, declaring war or making peace, and authorized to send its ships out beneath the royal ensign, commanded by captains every one of whom was the king’s commissioned officer.Although ships of many flags plied in the commerce of the East Indies, if you were aboard a larger Moorish, Arabian or Armenian vessel, you would often have heard the working of it directed by the bellowings of a Devonian, a Londoner, ora burr-tongued Yorkshireman. And if from the lookout there came the cry of “Pirate!” you could be just as sure that that swiftly oncoming menace was driven by a man who called in English to a crew which needed no interpreter.This varied coast and trans-oceanic sea traffic was almost without police protection. At their settlement up Calicut way, the Portuguese had a few ineffective tubs they called a navy. In India itself the one-time vigorous rule of the Moguls was collapsing and anarchy was slipping from beneath the lid. Yet even as government caved in, commerce hardily struggled on, in spite of the fact that its voyages began in fear and ended by good fortune, and its ships too often became fat, unshepherded sheep for lean and unlawful shearers.And the shearers—Tom Tooet al.—came; came in hordes; came from anywhere and everywhere, chiefly from across the Atlantic, New York, New England and their historic nest, the West Indies.The lay of the land as well as of the water made against the merchant and for the brigand. Once in the neighborhood, a thieving craft could steal up a river and wait its opportunity, comfortably provided with wood and water. Madagascar was the despair of the English Admiralty and the bitter wail of merchants great and small. It was the prime way station for pirates on their way to and from the Indies; it was a landwithout law, governed by warring native chieftains, and with the Comoro Islands close by, made one of the finest strategic bases imaginable for piratical operations. There the pirates swarmed, careened their ships, salted their provisions, established regular colonies, and exchanged from one ship to another, leaving or signing-up quite after the manner of legitimate ports. It was the West Indies of the Indian Ocean.To strike piracy down in Madagascar and India was to weaken its blow both at the American colonies and the Spanish Main. To India Kidd knew he must resort to enforce the terms of his commission.Richard Coote, the Irish earl Bellamont and a gentleman to whom the historian Macaulay gives a very good character, was at that time governor of the Province of New York. According to some accounts, he was in London when Kidd arrived there in the autumn of 1695 and was introduced to the sailor by a Colonel Livingston, one of New York’s prominent citizens, then in England. Macaulay, however, says that Bellamont was already in America when the acuteness of the problem of piracy stirred him to action, and that there he was recommended to William Kidd as a man competent on the sea and entirely familiar with the practices of pirates. Bellamont’s appeals to the home government for action being fruitless, he and Kidd evolved the notion of outfitting a privateman-of-war, Kidd to command, and sending it forth to meet the situation in whatever stronghold piracy might then be found. The venture would doubtless be profitable as well as patriotic.Bellamont promoted the scheme with eloquent letters to England and was so persuasive that statesmen like Shrewsbury and Romney, Orford, First Lord of the Admiralty, and John Somers between them subscribed several thousand pounds, and obtained the commission, under the Great Seal, which we have seen created Kidd in effect the sheriff of the far-off Orient seas.With these funds a galley—not, however, the kind formerly propelled by oars, but a sailing ship—called theAdventurewas purchased. Her measurement was two hundred and seventy tons. You can see from that what an imposing ship she must have been, especially when, in imagination, placed beside a modern transatlantic liner, for which she might possibly be big enough for a lifeboat. In those times the last thought of a sailor seems to have been for the size of his ship. Perhaps he was afraid a large ship would break in two. At any rate, he threw himself in the most matter-of-fact way at the highest waves in the world with what we would consider merely exaggerated rowboats.Kidd bristled theAdventurewith thirty cannon. They understood the economy of space in those days, you may well imagine. Kidd must have been a natural-born packer. Not onlythirty guns did he get on board, not only provisions for months, with small arms and ammunition as well, but when he left New York on the first run of the cruise proper, he was bedding and boarding some one hundred and sixty men! Whatever else he may have been, the captain was a man who knew his business as a tailor knows his needle.In order that he might be a stone for two birds, another commission was laid upon Kidd to take and condemn French ships, as by law made and provided, France and England being at war as usual. The thought was that any leisure hour that could be spared from taking pirates might be usefully employed in catching Frenchmen. The British Admiralty was always a great hand at putting people to work.Of course, if he got a Frenchman, he was not entitled to the captive’s goods, wares and merchandise. Enemy ships were to be brought into the nearest British port and by the proper authorities condemned. He had a blank check signed only on the sea-robbers’ banks.These things arranged, the trusty and well-beloved William Kidd, twice commissioned, competed with the active press-gangs for eighty good and faithful seamen among the taverns of Wapping and the wet alleys of Blackwall.
SALT WATER MONEY
Captain Kidd
Sometime in the autumn of the year 1695, Captain William Kidd, of New York, arrived in the city of London. He came as master of a trading sloop; he left in the following spring a commissioned officer of his most gracious Majesty, King William III, on the quarter-deck of what was really a man-of-war.
This was not the first time, however, that Captain Kidd had been in the public service. Said to be the son of a Scottish minister, he became first definitely noticeable in the province of New York, where, sometime before 1695, the grateful council of New York had voted him a gratuity of one hundred and fifty pounds for valuable efforts in suppressing local disturbances, ensuing the revolution of 1688. Not only that, but duringEngland’s interminable argument with France, he had locked shrouds with the Frenchmen off the West Indies, thus acquiring the repute of a “mighty man” against them.
In fact, Captain Kidd when he thus stepped on to the docks of old London was a substantial colonial, a householder and taxpayer of the town of New York, where, we must suppose, his wife and daughter moved in those delectable geometrical figures, the best circles.
The royal commission of 1696, though, was a novel one in the captain’s experience.
It is important to notice the exact wording of this commission:
“William III. By the grace of God, king of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, defender of the faith, etc. To our trusty and well-beloved captain William Kidd, commander of the ship Adventure-galley, or to any other the commander for the time being. Whereas we are informed That captain Thomas Too, John Ireland, captain Thomas Wake, and Captain William Maze, or Mace, and other our subjects, natives or inhabitants of New England, New York and elsewhere in our plantations in America, have associated themselves with divers other wicked and ill-disposed persons, and do, against the law of nations, daily commit many and great piracies, robberies, and depredations in the parts of America, and in other parts, to the grave hindrance and discouragement of trade andnavigation, and to the danger and hurt of our loving subjects, our allies, and all others navigating the seas upon their lawful occasions; Now know ye, That we being desirous to prevent the aforesaid mischiefs, and, as far as in us lies, to bring the said pirates, free-booters and sea-rovers to justice, have thought fit, and do hereby give and grant unto you the said William Kidd (to whom our commissioners for exercising the office of our Lord High Admiral of England, have granted a commission as a private man of war, bearing date the 11th day of December, 1695,) and unto the commander of the said ship for the time being, and unto the officers mariners and others, who shall be under your command, full power and authority to apprehend, seize, and take into your custody, as well the said Thomas Too, John Ireland, captain Thomas Wake, and Captain William Maze or Mace, as all such pirates, free-booters and sea-rovers, being our own subjects, or of any other nation associated with them, which you shall meet upon the coast or seas of America, or in any other seas or ports, with their ships and vessels, and also such merchandizes, money, goods and wares, as shall be found on board, or with them, in case they shall willingly yield themselves; but if they will not submit without fighting, then you are by force to compel them to yield. And we do also require you to bring, or cause to be brought, such pirates, free-booters and sea-rovers as you shall seize, to a legal trial; to the end that they may be proceeded against according to law in such cases.And we do hereby charge and command all our officers, ministers, and other our loving subjects whatsoever, to be aiding and assisting you in the premises. And we do hereby enjoin you to keep an exact journal of your proceeding in the execution of the premises, and therein to set down the names of such pirates and their officers and company, and the names of such ships and vessels as you shall by virtue of these presents seize and take, and the quantities of arms, ammunition, provision and loading of such ships, and the true value of the same, as near as you can judge.... In witness whereof we have caused the great seal of England to be affixed to these presents. Given at our court at Kensington, the 26th. day of January, 1695, and in the 7th. year of our reign.”
“William III. By the grace of God, king of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, defender of the faith, etc. To our trusty and well-beloved captain William Kidd, commander of the ship Adventure-galley, or to any other the commander for the time being. Whereas we are informed That captain Thomas Too, John Ireland, captain Thomas Wake, and Captain William Maze, or Mace, and other our subjects, natives or inhabitants of New England, New York and elsewhere in our plantations in America, have associated themselves with divers other wicked and ill-disposed persons, and do, against the law of nations, daily commit many and great piracies, robberies, and depredations in the parts of America, and in other parts, to the grave hindrance and discouragement of trade andnavigation, and to the danger and hurt of our loving subjects, our allies, and all others navigating the seas upon their lawful occasions; Now know ye, That we being desirous to prevent the aforesaid mischiefs, and, as far as in us lies, to bring the said pirates, free-booters and sea-rovers to justice, have thought fit, and do hereby give and grant unto you the said William Kidd (to whom our commissioners for exercising the office of our Lord High Admiral of England, have granted a commission as a private man of war, bearing date the 11th day of December, 1695,) and unto the commander of the said ship for the time being, and unto the officers mariners and others, who shall be under your command, full power and authority to apprehend, seize, and take into your custody, as well the said Thomas Too, John Ireland, captain Thomas Wake, and Captain William Maze or Mace, as all such pirates, free-booters and sea-rovers, being our own subjects, or of any other nation associated with them, which you shall meet upon the coast or seas of America, or in any other seas or ports, with their ships and vessels, and also such merchandizes, money, goods and wares, as shall be found on board, or with them, in case they shall willingly yield themselves; but if they will not submit without fighting, then you are by force to compel them to yield. And we do also require you to bring, or cause to be brought, such pirates, free-booters and sea-rovers as you shall seize, to a legal trial; to the end that they may be proceeded against according to law in such cases.And we do hereby charge and command all our officers, ministers, and other our loving subjects whatsoever, to be aiding and assisting you in the premises. And we do hereby enjoin you to keep an exact journal of your proceeding in the execution of the premises, and therein to set down the names of such pirates and their officers and company, and the names of such ships and vessels as you shall by virtue of these presents seize and take, and the quantities of arms, ammunition, provision and loading of such ships, and the true value of the same, as near as you can judge.... In witness whereof we have caused the great seal of England to be affixed to these presents. Given at our court at Kensington, the 26th. day of January, 1695, and in the 7th. year of our reign.”
Of all of which the sum is that Commander Kidd, in his private man-of-war, is to catch Tom Too and the rest of them wherever he could find them, bring them to justice and render a careful account of their ships and cargoes. The ostensible aim is to protect the American colonies; actually it is to exterminate piracy wherever discovered.
English-speaking folk have been as much a part of the sea as the white spume of the waves. Like their element, too, they have made for good and ill. The by-product of England’s maritime effort was the sea-rover, a creature often as skilled, unfearing and enterprising as his brotherwho went up and down the highways of the ocean on more lawful occasions.
Seventeenth-and eighteenth-century piracy gave to the world that villainous, but picturesque, aggregation of maritime felons which has so much fascination for people who never grow too old to enjoy vicarious adventure: Too, Ireland, Wake, Low, Davis, Lewis, England, Blackbeard, Avery, Gow, Quelch and other bold quarter-deck—usually the other fellow’s quarter-deck—strutters, including, notably, the subject of our present observations.
These ungentlemen gleaned in three principal regions: Africa, the East and West Indies, with an occasional flyer down Brazil way. Under the black flag, we shall presently see something of all these places; just now we are engaged with the East Indies. Coming and going, and sometimes lingering, they bothered the “plantations” all the way from Charleston to Boston, so that the total scope of piracy was sweeping and widely embracing.
India was pouring out richly its products of field and loom, plantation and cottage, and was drawing hungrily in from Arabia, Europe, Africa, everywhere, the things nature or economic circumstance denied her. The carriers of this mighty movement of materials were usually rather insignificant craft called grabs, pinks, galiots, sloops and what-not; affairs of one mast, acouple of men, a boy and about sixteen ounces of cargo. These were coasters; a larger vessel plied to the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea under charter of Moors, Armenians and other swart merchants.
Bumping these lesser fry out of the way, however, were the comparatively impressive ships of the expanding European trading companies—Dutch, Swedish, Austrian and so on—and preeminently the English East India Company, destined to grow great enough eventually to swallow India herself,—old John Company.
The English company—taking it as illustrative—lined the Indian coast with its forts or factories, and built its own vessels, the noted “Indiamen”, at its home docks at Deptford; fought its rivals, fought the natives, carried on perpetual war under the banner of trade. Protected to the point of complete monopoly by royal and parliamentary charters, it became practically a State itself, with the power of minting money, maintaining forts and armies, negotiating treaties, declaring war or making peace, and authorized to send its ships out beneath the royal ensign, commanded by captains every one of whom was the king’s commissioned officer.
Although ships of many flags plied in the commerce of the East Indies, if you were aboard a larger Moorish, Arabian or Armenian vessel, you would often have heard the working of it directed by the bellowings of a Devonian, a Londoner, ora burr-tongued Yorkshireman. And if from the lookout there came the cry of “Pirate!” you could be just as sure that that swiftly oncoming menace was driven by a man who called in English to a crew which needed no interpreter.
This varied coast and trans-oceanic sea traffic was almost without police protection. At their settlement up Calicut way, the Portuguese had a few ineffective tubs they called a navy. In India itself the one-time vigorous rule of the Moguls was collapsing and anarchy was slipping from beneath the lid. Yet even as government caved in, commerce hardily struggled on, in spite of the fact that its voyages began in fear and ended by good fortune, and its ships too often became fat, unshepherded sheep for lean and unlawful shearers.
And the shearers—Tom Tooet al.—came; came in hordes; came from anywhere and everywhere, chiefly from across the Atlantic, New York, New England and their historic nest, the West Indies.
The lay of the land as well as of the water made against the merchant and for the brigand. Once in the neighborhood, a thieving craft could steal up a river and wait its opportunity, comfortably provided with wood and water. Madagascar was the despair of the English Admiralty and the bitter wail of merchants great and small. It was the prime way station for pirates on their way to and from the Indies; it was a landwithout law, governed by warring native chieftains, and with the Comoro Islands close by, made one of the finest strategic bases imaginable for piratical operations. There the pirates swarmed, careened their ships, salted their provisions, established regular colonies, and exchanged from one ship to another, leaving or signing-up quite after the manner of legitimate ports. It was the West Indies of the Indian Ocean.
To strike piracy down in Madagascar and India was to weaken its blow both at the American colonies and the Spanish Main. To India Kidd knew he must resort to enforce the terms of his commission.
Richard Coote, the Irish earl Bellamont and a gentleman to whom the historian Macaulay gives a very good character, was at that time governor of the Province of New York. According to some accounts, he was in London when Kidd arrived there in the autumn of 1695 and was introduced to the sailor by a Colonel Livingston, one of New York’s prominent citizens, then in England. Macaulay, however, says that Bellamont was already in America when the acuteness of the problem of piracy stirred him to action, and that there he was recommended to William Kidd as a man competent on the sea and entirely familiar with the practices of pirates. Bellamont’s appeals to the home government for action being fruitless, he and Kidd evolved the notion of outfitting a privateman-of-war, Kidd to command, and sending it forth to meet the situation in whatever stronghold piracy might then be found. The venture would doubtless be profitable as well as patriotic.
Bellamont promoted the scheme with eloquent letters to England and was so persuasive that statesmen like Shrewsbury and Romney, Orford, First Lord of the Admiralty, and John Somers between them subscribed several thousand pounds, and obtained the commission, under the Great Seal, which we have seen created Kidd in effect the sheriff of the far-off Orient seas.
With these funds a galley—not, however, the kind formerly propelled by oars, but a sailing ship—called theAdventurewas purchased. Her measurement was two hundred and seventy tons. You can see from that what an imposing ship she must have been, especially when, in imagination, placed beside a modern transatlantic liner, for which she might possibly be big enough for a lifeboat. In those times the last thought of a sailor seems to have been for the size of his ship. Perhaps he was afraid a large ship would break in two. At any rate, he threw himself in the most matter-of-fact way at the highest waves in the world with what we would consider merely exaggerated rowboats.
Kidd bristled theAdventurewith thirty cannon. They understood the economy of space in those days, you may well imagine. Kidd must have been a natural-born packer. Not onlythirty guns did he get on board, not only provisions for months, with small arms and ammunition as well, but when he left New York on the first run of the cruise proper, he was bedding and boarding some one hundred and sixty men! Whatever else he may have been, the captain was a man who knew his business as a tailor knows his needle.
In order that he might be a stone for two birds, another commission was laid upon Kidd to take and condemn French ships, as by law made and provided, France and England being at war as usual. The thought was that any leisure hour that could be spared from taking pirates might be usefully employed in catching Frenchmen. The British Admiralty was always a great hand at putting people to work.
Of course, if he got a Frenchman, he was not entitled to the captive’s goods, wares and merchandise. Enemy ships were to be brought into the nearest British port and by the proper authorities condemned. He had a blank check signed only on the sea-robbers’ banks.
These things arranged, the trusty and well-beloved William Kidd, twice commissioned, competed with the active press-gangs for eighty good and faithful seamen among the taverns of Wapping and the wet alleys of Blackwall.